SIL International Publications

Our Authors

Our authors are anthropologists, educators, linguists, literacy practioners, and translators who have deep experience in their area of study and fieldwork. Many authors and editors are SIL staff, but we also publish authors from other institutions. 

Barnwell, Katharine

"Katy" Barnwell has served with SIL International since 1963 in Nigeria and other countries in Africa, and from 1989 to 1999 in the International Translation Department at Dallas. Currently, she is an international translation consultant. She received her PhD in Linguistics from the School of African and Oriental Studies and University College, London, in 1969. The titles she has published with SIL include: Translator's Notes on Malachi: Helps on Understanding and Translating the Book Written by Malachi, Translator's Notes on Genesis 1-11:26: Helps on Understanding and Translating the Book of Genesis, A Workshop Guide for Primer Construction, Bible Translation: An Introductory Course in Translation Principles, Teacher's Manual to Accompany Bible Translation: An Introductory Course in Translation Principles, Introduction to Semantics and Translation with Special Reference to Bible Translation.

Publications by Barnwell

 

Blight, Richard C.

Richard Blight has served as a translation consultant with SIL since 1960. He completed the translation of the New Testament for the Tenango Otomi people of Mexico in 1975. In addition to authoring numerous articles and books, he authored six volumes in the Exegetical Summary series and Translation Problems from A to Z. Blight was the senior editor of the Exegetical Summaries series

Publications by Blight

 

Burquest, Donald A.

Donald Burquest is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Arlington and an International Linguistic Consultant with SIL International. He did fieldwork in Nigeria on the Ngas language and was involved in a language project completed in 1977. He received a PhD in Linguistics from UCLA in 1973. He is the author of Phonological Analysis: A Functional Approach, 3rd edition, and numerous articles. He is also the coauthor of A Survey of Linguistic Theories, 3rd edition.

Publications by Burquest

 

Callow, John C.

John Callow is a graduate of the London Bible College, England, and received a PhD in linguistics from London University. He is the author of two SSA series books, Semantic and Structural Analysis of Colossians and Semantic and Structural Analysis of 2 Thessalonians, and is co-author of The Semantic Structure of Written Communication.

Publications by Callow

 

Carlton, Matthew E.

Matthew Carlton has a BA from Concordia College and taught Discourse Grammar and Field Methods for the University of Texas at Arlington. As a member of Lutheran Bible Translators, he worked from 1984 to 1988 with the Grebo people of Liberia, West Africa, to translate the New Testament and portions of the Old Testament, as well as establish an indigenous literacy program. During that time, Matthew also trained as a consultant under Dr. Robert Longacre in Nigeria and Togo. In 2004 he received an honorary doctorate for his work from Concordia University in Ann Arbor, MI. Matthew was a translation consultant for SIL where his primary role was developing the Translator's Reference Translations for the Gospels and Acts and working with others to adapt it to other major languages, including English, Indonesian, French, and Spanish. 

Publications by Carlton

 

Deibler, Ellis W.

Ellis Deibler has a PhD in linguistics from the University of Michigan, and is a Certified Senior Translation Consultant for SIL International. He is also a Semantic and Structural Analysis author of SSA Romans and SSA Revelation. Deibler is the author of An Index of Implicit Information in the GospelsAn Index of Implicit Information in Acts-Revelation, and co-author of Meaning-Based Translation Workbook.

Publications by Deibler

 

Edmundson, Jerold A.

Professor Jerold A. Edmondson has extensive experience as a field linguist in China, Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), and Viet Nam. He served as Chairman of the Linguistics Department of the University of Texas at Arlington and is a specialist in Southeast Asian languages.

Publications by Edmundson

 

Floyd, Rick

Dr. Rick Floyd has studied the Wanka dialect of Quechua in the central Peruvian Andes since 1981. He earned his PhD in linguistics at the University of California in San Diego in 1993 and is a member of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association and the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas. He has taught phonetics and other courses at several SIL schools and is a linguistic consultant of SIL Peru. He is author of The Structure of Evidential Categories in Wanka Quechua and also the co-author of Articulatory Phonetics: Tools for Analyzing the World's Languages, and Bible Translation Basics: Communicating Scripture in a Relevant Way.

Publications by Floyd

 

Headland, Thomas

Thomas Headland is an international anthropology consultant with SIL International and adjunct professor of anthropology at Southern Methodist University. He is also a fellow of the American Anthropological Association. His PhD is in ecological anthropology from the University of Hawaii.

Publications by Headland

 

Levinsohn, Stephen H.

Levinsohn has a doctorate in Linguistic Science from the University of Reading, England. He is an International Linguistics Consultant with SIL International, did fieldwork in Colombia from 1968 to 1998 with the Inga (Quechuan) people, and directs linguistic and "Discourse for Translation" workshops in different parts of West Africa and Latin America. He is the author of Discourse Features of Ten Languages of West-Central AfricaDiscourse Features of New Testament Greek: A Coursebook on the Information Structure of New Testament Greek, and Analyzing Discourse: A Manual of Basic Concepts (with Robert A. Dooley).

Publications by Levinsohn

 

Lewis, M. Paul

M. Paul Lewis (PhD, sociolinguistics, Georgetown University) did fieldwork in Guatemala, was general editor of the Ethnologue®, and a sociolinguistics consultant with SIL. His research interests are language endangerment, language policy and planning, and language documentation. He has consulted and trained on six continents. Lewis authored K'iche': A Study in the Sociology of Language, co-authored Sustaining Language Use: Perspectives on Community-Based Language Development, and was editor of Ethnologue: Languages of the World.

Publications by Lewis

 

Longacre, Robert E.

Longacre joined the Summer Institute of Linguistics in 1946. He has a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He and his wife Gwen translated the New Testament into Trique, a Mexican Oto-Manguean language. From 1972 to 1991 he taught linguistics at the University of Texas at Arlington and also served as a linguistic consultant for SIL. The titles he published with SIL include: Holistic Discourse Analysis (with Shin Ja Hwang), and Understanding Hebrew Verb Forms: Distribution and Function across Genres (with Andrew C. Bowling).

Publications by Longacre

 

McKinney, Norris P.; Carol V. McKinney

Norris McKinney (PhD, University of Michigan) and Carol McKinney (PhD, Southern Methodist University) conducted fieldwork for over ten years while living among the Bajju people of northern Nigeria. Both have taught articulatory phonetics, and Norris also taught acoustic phonetics. He began writing An Introduction to Field Phonetics as an update on data taught in SIL phonetics courses. Norris passed away before this book could be published, and Carol has brought this work to completion on his behalf. Carol is also the author of Globe-Trotting in Sandals: A Field Guide to Cultural Research, Bajju Christian Conversion in the Middle Belt of Nigeria, and Baranzan's People: An Ethnohistory of the Bajju of the Middle Belt of Nigeria.

Publications by McKinney

 

Merrifield, William R.

William R. Merrifield taught linguistics and anthropology, served as Director of Academic Publications and Director of the Museum of Cultures. Merrifield is the author of Five Amazonian Studies on Worldview and Cultural Change, South American Kinship, Proto Otomanguean Kinship, and Instructor's Guide to Laboratory Manual for Morphology and Syntax, as well as co-author of Laboratory Manual for Morphology and Syntax.

Publications by Merrifield

 

Snider, Keith L.

Snider (DLitt, Leiden University) has specialized in issues related to tone since his fieldwork in Ghana with the Chumburung in the 1980s. He has participated in or led workshops dealing with tone and orthography for over fifty languages, and teaches a course on tone analysis for SIL International. He is the author of The Geometry and Features of Tone and Tone Analysis for Field Linguists.

Publications by Snider

 

Wendland, Ernst R.

Wendland (PhD, African Languages and Literature, University of Wisconsin) is an instructor at Lusaka Lutheran Seminary and a dissertation examiner at the University of Zambia. A former UBS Translation Consultant, he serves as Professor Extraordinary in the Centre for Bible Interpretation and Translation in Africa, Stellenbosch University. Wendland has authored seven books with SIL, primarily in our Publication in Translation and Textlinguistics. Titles include: LiFE-Style Translating: A Workbook for Bible Translators, Analyzing the Psalms: With Exercises for Bible Students and Translators, Translating the Literature of Scripture: A Literary-Rhetorical Approach to Bible Translation, Lovely, Lively, Lyrics: Selected Studies in Biblical Hebrew Verse, Orality and the Scriptures: Composition, Translation, and Transmission, Studies in the Psalms: Literary-Structural Analysis with Application to Translation, and Prophetic Rhetoric: Case Studies in Text Analysis and Translation.

Publications by Wendland